Double Bill - Shakespeare's Queens: She-wolves and Serpents and The Madness of King Lear (16 October - 3 November) Arts Theatre in London's West End, 6-7 Great Newport Street, London T: 020 7836 8463
Mon-Sat 7.30p / Thurs & Sat 2.30p
Running Time: 2 and a half hours including interval / Tickets £16.50 - £28.50
Shakespeare's seductively powerful Queens and his darkly mad King Lear thrilled audiences at the 2012 Adelaide and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals and now they're together in the West End: two highly entertaining halves of a contemporary and eclectic Shakespearian 'Double Bill'.
Two Australian plays have been offered the extraordinary opportunity of making the coveted transfer from Edinburgh's Fringe to London's West End in October-November 2012.
Shakespeare's Queens: She-wolves and Serpents
Australian writer/actor, Kath Perry (Straylight Australia) has a history of producing her own work. She has taken shows to Adelaide, Edinburgh and Stratford-upon-Avon. In "Shakespeare's Queens: She-wolves and Serpents", she is joined by Sydney-based actors Patrick Trumper ("It's a Dad Thing" - TML Enterprises, and "Darwin's Brave New World" - ABCTV) and Rachel Ferris ("Home and Away" and "Deadly Women") under the watchful direction of Roz Riley (Factory Space). After the critical and popular success of its season in Edinburgh, the play will join forces with another Australian success story - Leofric Kingsford-Smith's "The Madness of King Lear".
Both Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots are dead, but will that stop them? No! They are as argumentative as ever, and her beheading at Elizabeth's order is never far from Mary's thoughts. Enter Will Shakespeare. In an entertaining and fast paced hour of intrigue, passion, tragedy and triumph, each of their Highnesses endeavour to garner his support and that of the queens in his plays, hoping to prove that her style of rule was best.
www.shakespearesqueens.blogspot.com
The Madness of King Lear
Like Perry, Leof Kingsford (Underbelly, Crownies, Home and Away) is something of a fringe festival veteran. He recently completed a tour of Adelaide, Los Angeles, London and the Edinburgh Festival with his one man play, Mission of Flowers. Now he is on the road again in a new production directed by Sarah Fernandez Reyes and co-starring dancer Lucas R Tsolkian (Avignon Le Off, The Performers Inc.).
In The Madness of King Lear, the spirit of the old King is unable to rest as he battles to understand the actions of his three daughters. His dear companion and shamanic guide, Fool, shape-shifts in taunting flashes of half-glimpsed insight, as the King becomes ever more lost in his memory and his madness. Both tragic and playful, this is Lear as you've never seen him before, an explosive fusion of drama, dance, clowning and comedy.
http://www.themadnessofkinglear.com/
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